Tag Archives: Ceramic

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At first, Colorado based artist Courtney Mattison, who describes herself as a visual learner, began sculpting her elaborate works inspired by sea creatures as a better way of understanding them. But over time, her love and admiration for these organisms evolved into a message about their well being and preservation. Previously featured here on our blog, Mattison hopes that her ceramic sculptures and installations, based on her own photographs of different organisms living in coral reefs, will inspire others to appreciate the beauty of the ocean as she does.

Baltimore, Maryland based artist Brad Blair designs imaginative sculptural monstrosities that combine features of real world animals with those from our dreams and nightmares. His works are an elaborate mixture of media, made of primarily clay and ceramic, natural parts like fox tails and fish fins, rubber cast tongues, and mechanical elements like watches and monofilament, giving them a certain science-fiction or cyborg quality.

Vipoo Srivilasa works predominantly in ceramics. He uses porcelain clay to hand build his work, then he paints over it with cobalt oxide to obtain the blue color. The last step of this process consists of firing the work at 1200°C. According to the artist, his work is saturated with symbols taken from different religions, although it’s not meant to evoke religion itself, but rather to reinvent certain religious images. “For the series Roop-Rote-Ruang (Taste-Touch-Tell), I used the Buddhist philosophy of Ayatana as a reference for my work. The Roop-Rote-Ruang (Taste-Touch-Tell) Project is a series of dinner parties that I hosted to embrace the Buddhist concept of “Ayatana” and the six “channels of awareness” (my guests’ sight, taste, smell, hearing, touch and mindfulness)”, he says.

Santa Fe, New Mexico based artist Max Lehman instills humor and playfulness into his surreal ceramic sculptures of ancient characters. Like artifacts of his youth, his whimsical versions of South American pre-Columbian gods, ghosts, and other creatures embody everything that the artist grew up on and loves, including 1950s advertisements, cartoons, graffiti, and punk rock music. Perhaps there is no better description of his work than the title of his next exhibition, “Gods + Goop + Gobbledygook”, opening at Stranger Factory in New Mexico on January 8th.

Pennsylvania based photographer Peter Olson has found a unique way of presenting his photographic prints. Also a sculptor, he doesn’t stop at traditional photo paper- his photo-montages of people and places he’s visited are produced on a series of ceramics that he calls “Photo Ceramica”. Olson’s photos are encased on each piece, left by ink from prints that, when fired, burn away and leave a permanent image from the iron oxide in the ink. The form of a three-dimensional object, such as an urn or a plate, instantly makes his photo works more dynamic and complex.

There’s something oddly beautiful about the work of Kansas based artist Jamie Bates Slone. Her vibrant sculptures are teaming with diseased growths and discolorations, and the effect is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying. Slone can relate to the physical and emotional impact that disease brings. “Through conjured memory, I revisit my family’s history with illness and premature death. These memories are flooded with emotion and anxiety that I use as the base of my sculptural work,” she says.